Border Town Is Angered After Marine Is Cleared

By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK

Published: August 16, 1997

MARFA, Tex., Aug. 15—
On the day after a state grand jury decided not to bring charges against a marine who shot and killed a local teen-ager during an anti-drug operation on the Mexican border, embittered supporters of the young man's family vowed today to press for a new grand jury proceeding and for disciplinary action against Federal officials in charge of the operation.

''This is not the end,'' said the Rev. Mel LaFollette, a community leader in the village of Redford, in the Big Bend region of Texas, where the youth, Esequiel Hernandez Jr., 18, was killed on May 20. ''This is the beginning.''

At the same time, officials in the civil rights division of the Justice Department announced that they were investigating whether any civil rights violations had occurred in Mr. Hernandez's killing, although the officials emphasized that their step was only preliminary.

The marine, Cpl. Clemente Banuelos, 22, who killed Mr. Hernandez with an M-16 rifle, has said he did so because he saw Mr. Hernandez, while herding goats, raise his own rifle and feared that the youth was about to shoot at one of three other marines with whom Corporal Banuelos was on patrol.

The grand jury reached its conclusion on Thursday night, after a long and tumultuous day here in Marfa that featured a vigil by ribbon-bearing protesters demanding justice and an emotional appearance by Lance Cpl. James Michael Blood, the marine in whose defense Corporal Banuelos says he fired. After testifying before the grand jurors, Corporal Blood emerged and told reporters that his fellow marine had ''possibly saved my life'' and should not be charged.

Corporal Banuelos, who is stationed at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and has never commented publicly on the incident, appeared in Houston today at the office of his lawyer, Jack Zimmermann, but, on instructions of the lawyer, said nothing at all. Mr. Zimmermann reiterated his position that the shooting was a tragedy but one that was legally justified.

In their own way, the grand jurors appeared to have reached the same conclusion. In an unusual step, they asked the local District Attorney, Albert Valadez, to explain their reasoning, and he did so before a throng of reporters on the lawn of the Presidio County Courthouse late Thursday night.

The grand jurors, Mr. Valadez said, believed that Mr. Hernandez, who routinely carried his World War I-vintage rifle while tending his family's goat herd, never intended to fire at anybody.

The marines were in full camouflage at the time of the shooting, and state investigators have said Mr. Hernandez, who the marines say had already fired twice in their general direction, might not have even known that there were other people in the area. Instead, the investigators say, he may have been firing to scare off wild animals that lurk in the brushy area above the Rio Grande and prey on goats.

Nonetheless, when Mr. Hernandez raised his rifle and prepared to shoot in the direction of Corporal Blood, Mr. Valadez said in describing the grand jurors' conclusion, ''Clemente Banuelos acted reasonably in defense of a third person.''